Lecture | Lunch Research Seminar
A New Age of Infrastructure Development? An Historical Comparison of Nested Dependency in Pakistan and Egypt
- Date
- Tuesday 2 December 2025
- Time
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.24
Registration
All are welcome, however please register in advance at l-peg@hum.leidenuniv.nl to receive a copy of the paper and lunch.
Abstract
US-China infrastructure competition is touted to enable greater autonomy for the Global South, but a more circumspect survey of the opportunities provided to southern states is needed. This article problematises the asymmetry-based accounts prevalent in world order theorising and offers a broader, more systemic account of inter-state rivalry by drawing on historical comparison between Pakistan (2010-) amidst US-China rivalry and Egypt (1952-65) during the Cold War. Focusing on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Aswan High Dam as the key Chinese and Soviet transnational infrastructure initiatives in each era, we show how the Soviet Union and China outcompeted the US by offering alternative, non-conditional modalities in infrastructure financing, but that nevertheless resulted in what we conceive to be nested dependency. Southern strategies to deepen engagement with the ‘challenger’ power introduced its own relations of dependency, while providing only limited insulation and balance of payments relief from the pressures of a global system which remain centred around US dollar-backed financial hegemony. While the infrastructure megaprojects themselves were a success, neither Soviet nor Chinese backing provided long-term resolution for Egypt and Pakistan’s balance of payments woes, which hinged on access to hard currency during the Cold War and debt relief in the financialised world economy of US-China rivalry.